Several Pomona Unified School District programs to relocate in June

POMONA - Some of Pomona Unified School District's programs this summer will move to the closed Pueblo Elementary School and the nearby Village at Indian Hill.

Pomona Unified school board members last week gave district administrators authorization to move forward with a proposal to relocate the programs, effective June 5, according to a staff report.

The action calls for moving the district's School of Extended Educational Options, sometimes referred to as SEEO, from suites in the Village at Indian Hill to the main building of what used to be Pueblo Elementary, which is also in the Village complex.

Moving SEEO "would open up suites that could be leased," said Leslie Barnes, Pomona Unified's assistant superintendent for business services and chief financial officer.

Park West High School will move from West Second Street to Pueblo's east campus building, the staff report said.

Pomona Alternative School, which shares facilities with Park West, will move to portable buildings on the Pueblo site, the staff report said.

Plans call for establishing a Career and Technical Education Center at the Village at Indian Hill that would accommodate adult education programs in welding, machining and office skills, the staff report said.

Moving those programs from their current location on West Mission Boulevard on Pomona's west side would put them under the same roof as adult education programs in cosmetology and barbering.

Board of Education President Roberta Perlman said Friday a great deal of thought was put into the moves which will be beneficial to students.

In the case of the alternative schools, the programs are now offered in facilities on West Second Street in an area surrounded by industrial uses.

"The facilities are older and the location is not the best," she said. "We want to offer all our students nice facilities."

"We want to have high expectations for all our students, and facilities affect them, too," Perlman said.

Although three different schools will be on three parts of what used to be an elementary school, they will all be separate and distinct schools, each with its own entrance, she said.

Putting the programs in proximity to one another will also give the schools access to a greater number of services such as counselors because they will be able to share resources, Perlman said.

Plans for this move are still being reviewed, Pomona Unified Superintendent Richard Martinez said Friday.

District administrators are looking for funding that would allow them to make some improvements to a site within the Village needed to accommodate the programs, he said.

If the funding is not secured or the cost is excessive the programs will not move until other options are found, Martinez said.

The move of the various programs will allow the district to consolidate some of its programs and free up properties that could be traded, leased or possibly sold to generate funds.

Before some facilities can be disposed of, some would have to go through a process that includes the involvement of a committee consisting of district residents, parents, business people, teachers and others, Barnes said.

The committee reviews the properties and provides recommendations on how to dispose of properties.

As part of their proposal, district administrators also recommended moving the Adult and Career Education programs in areas such as English as a Second Language, GED preparation and other courses taught in a traditional classroom to Montvue Elementary if school board members decided to close it and move its students to other nearby schools.

School board members chose to keep Montvue open for at least another year so the adult education programs will stay at their current location on Mission Boulevard or move to another site in the future, Barnes said.